The Justice Department announced the indictment of 13 Russians on charges of attempting to defraud the United States by meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, but a former federal prosecutor says the charges may have a chilling effect on free speech here at home and around the globe.

And it suggests that there was no collusion with the Trump campaign.

On Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictments handed down from a grand jury connected to the investigation of Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian activities during the race for the White House.

While all 13 Russians face defrauding charges, some of them also face wire fraud and bank fraud charges as well.

However in addition to the indictments, Rosenstein also announced that any Americans participating in the operation did so unwittingly. Many media outlets immediately went wall-to-wall with breathless coverage of the news, but former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy isn’t sure what the bombshell is.

“I don’t think there was any doubt that the Russians were trying to meddle in our election because I think they meddle as much as they can in all our elections. In fact, this indictment says this particular scheme to meddle in the elections goes back about five years. So it’s long before there even was a Donald Trump campaign,” said McCarthy.

McCarthy further says there is a big gray area about what sort of foreign involvement in American politics is legal and what is not. In this case, he says the indictments suggest Mueller sees the Russian bot activity as an in-kind political contribution.

He also says the plan is deeply frowned upon by the Justice Department, which cannot properly register those involved in the plot as foreign agents since they operate anonymously. The State Department also has reason to be furious since the Russians came to the U.S. on visas, giving very different reasons for being here.

But while McCarthy urges the government to prosecute visa fraud as aggressively as possible, he says the Mueller indictments might create more problems than they solve.

“I don’t really understand the point of this. I don’t even know if these people are prosecutable. I don’t know that there’s a chance you actually get these people physically into a federal criminal court in the United States,” said McCarthy.

However, he says the long-term impact of this could create problems for the United States.

“It seems to sweep into it, potentially, a lot of behavior that Americans engage in and may result in retaliation on the part of foreign governments on activities that are pretty important to the spreading of American messages that we want to spread throughout the world,” said McCarthy.

The interview:

And he says political involvement on the internet could also be greatly impacted by Friday’s actions.

“You’re talking about regulation of political expression of a variety that a lot of Americans engage in. It seems like they’re doing this as a sweeping prohibition on a theory that these government agencies have had their missions frustrated by the way that this scheme took place,” said McCarthy, noting that such freedom could be at risk all for a case that may never be tried.

McCarthy painted another unsettling scenario.

“Are we now saying that every time that somebody champions a candidate or a cause in social media that that’s an in-kind campaign contribution and that if you’re doing it anonymously or under a pseudonym that you’re defrauding the United States?” asked McCarthy.

“It would seem to me that that would be absurd, but it’s less absurd after reading this indictment than it would have been before,” said McCarthy.

In addition to the actual charges announced Friday, McCarthy says it is significant that Mueller and Rosenstein conclude that no Americans knowingly collaborated with Russian attempts to cause mischief in the campaign. They also pointed out that the bots stirred up partisans on both sides, certainly in the wake of the elections.

“It does say that to the extent Americans were involved in this it was ‘unwitting,’ which means that if that’s the full extent of it, there obviously can’t be a collusion conspiracy because you can’t collude – I mean collusion is a nonsense word legally anyway.

“To be a criminal conspirator, you have to have an agreement to violate the law and that’s not something that someone can do unwittingly,” said McCarthy.

So much like every other development in this case, both sides of the Russia debate see vindication in Friday’s developments.

“Anybody who was interested in championing something that I think should have been beyond dispute – namely that the Russians tried to meddle in our elections – they get to say, ‘See, Russians meddle in elections.’

“And anybody who had a political interest in saying that Trump didn’t collude, they can now come away and say, ‘See, this thing shows there’s no collusion,'” said McCarthy.

It was in a “dossier” assembled by a former British spy in contact with Russian sources and working for a company funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign that made allegations against President Trump.

The claims included that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian on the 2016 election.

The “dirt” that was dug up on Trump, almost all unverified, later apparently was used by the Department of Justice and FBI as a legal document to obtain permission to spy on the Trump campaign.

Gun-control advocates and media figures are making several accusations against the gun lobby and guns-rights reporters in the aftermath of Wednesday’s horrific high-school shooting in Florida, but a prominent gun-rights group says the claims are baseless and media attention given to this killer is already inspiring the next one.

On Wednesday, 17 people were killed and another 14 injured at a high school in Parkland, Florida. The 19-year-old shooter, who was once expelled from the school, is in police custody.

As has become custom in the wake of such horrific tragedies, the political blame game began just minutes after the news first broke of the shooting, with many gun-control advocates accusing their opponents of bearing some of the blame.

“That is certainly the theme of the day, that if you take a particular position on a policy that you’re implicated or complicit,” Hammond said. “The left now thinks it has a terminology that will hurt us, so it’s sticking to it.”

Hammond is also playing offense, asserting that the non-stop media attention to massacres like the one in Parkland only makes the problem worse.

“I fear they’re never going to stop until the names and pictures of these horrible individuals stop being plastered on TV 24 hours a day,” he said.

“There are probably millions and millions of young men currently sitting in their parents’ basement, in front of their computer screen, without a date for Valentine’s Day, who potentially could snap.

“What’s going to cause them to snap in some cases is that they have a wall of clippings of the attention given to previous shooters,” said Hammond, who noted that the killer at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, had such a wall before he murdered small children and school officials in 2012.

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Michael Hammond:

A common argument from gun-control advocates in recent days is such mass shootings “only happen here.” Hammond said that’s not true, and he pointed to major mass shootings in Norway and France in recent years.

“There are plenty of countries that have horrific incidents that are comparable,” he said. “One of the things those countries don’t have is a left-wing cable media that glorifies these killers and lionizes them.”

Media figures and Democratic politicians are also accusing the GOP-led Congress and President Trump of making it easier for mentally ill people to buy guns, as the result of a bill signed into law last year.

Hammond said that is also way off base.

“What [the Obama-era rule] did was it trolled Social Security disability,” he said. “It said, ‘We’ll look at everyone who has a guardian receiving their check for whatever reason. We’ll look at everyone with PTSD, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, and we’ll send their names to West Virginia and take away their guns.

“Congress, not surprisingly, found this objectionable and found it fundamentally lacking in due process and overturned it by a fairly substantial margin. The fact is, 257,000 law-abiding veterans have had their guns taken away from them because they had PTSD.”

Hammond said he finds it appalling that these people were trusted with automatic weapons to defend the nation in uniform, but they aren’t trusted with semi-automatic weapons to protect their family and property.

The Florida shooting is the latest mass shooting to have a killer using an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. Hammond said it’s the most popular rifle in America, but gun-control advocates want to see it banned.

Hammond said the AR-15 may look more menacing than other guns, but it works exactly the same as semi-automatic weapons made by Glock and Baretta. He said it’s used in mass killings because of the copycat effect, and he believes the efforts to ban it are purely political.

“It’s exploiting a tragedy for the purpose of making a political point,” Hammond said. “The day after they outlaw the AR-15, they’ll be back for national gun registration, or national gun confiscation, or something else.

“Look at New York, there is no jurisdiction that has begun to go down that road that has voluntarily stopped short of complete, across-the-board gun bans and confiscation.”

So what is his solution? He said the best way to prevent such atrocities in the future is to repeal gun-free zones that were implemented more than two decades ago.

“In 1996, Congress banned guns from campuses,” Hammond said. “Guess what happened within two or three years of that? Columbine happened. Since the efforts of the media to use Columbine to exploit Columbine, for the purpose of achieving gun control, there has just been a non-stop session of copycat killings.”

He said killers almost always attack in a gun-free zone because they are confident there will be no resistance.

“If you want to get your 15 minutes of fame – if you want to go someplace and ensure that your name will be enshrined in the pantheon of MSNBC forever – what you do is you go into that place where you know no one else will have a gun and no one will shoot back,” he said. “Where is that? A school.”

Hammond added: “The Aurora shooter basically went from movie theater to movie theater until he saw a ‘No Guns’ sign.”

Hammond strongly endorses legislation from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., that would rescind the gun-free zones from the federal level. He also encourages armed personnel to be placed at schools and other soft targets.

“If one of these guys shows up with a gun and he dies before he’s fired the first shot, then he’s going to look foolish, and there aren’t going to be copycat shootings [like] that,” he said.

A judge in British Columbia dismissed all charges against climate-change skeptic Dr. Tim Ball, in what Ball calls a major win for free speech in an era where the effort to stifle politically incorrect opinions is “endemic.”

On Tuesday, Judge Ronald Skolrood dismissed the charges aimed at Ball by Canadian climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who is also leader of the Green Party in British Columbia and has a long affiliation with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Why was Weaver targeting Ball in court?

“The article (Ball authored) on Weaver was saying that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had so directed the focus of climate research and all of the funding, by the way – we’re talking billions of American dollars toward CO2 and human-caused climate change – so, for 30 years, there’s been no real advancement in our understanding of climate,” said Ball, a former professor of climatology at the University of Winnipeg and author of numerous books on climate science.

The trouble started soon after that article ran.

“The mistake I made was that after an interview with Weaver, I made some comments that I didn’t fully substantiate. And that’s what triggered the lawsuit,” Ball told WND and Radio America.

“As soon as I got the lawsuit, I sent him a letter of apology for those unsubstantiated comments,” he said. “That wasn’t enough for him to drop the lawsuit. He took it all the way.”

Ball said Weaver relishes portraying himself as a victim.

“To give you a measure of what we’re dealing with, he posted that apology letter of mine on a wall in his academic office that is labeled the ‘Wall of Hate,'” Ball said.

“He’s labeled it that because he shows it to students to say, ‘Look, here’s all the people that hate me, and this is what I have to go through to defend you and defend the planet from these climate-change deniers.”

Ball said his fierce participation in the climate debate is about science, not politics or hate.

“It’s laughable. I don’t hate him,” he said. “What I dislike is the fact he’s using climate science for a political agenda.

“The judge heard all of that, heard about the ‘Wall of Fate,’ and came forward with his judgment of total dismissal of Weaver’s claims. By the way, when we got to the courtroom, (Weaver) didn’t present a single witness.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Tim Ball:

Ball still faces charges in a lawsuit filed by Dr. Michael Mann, the originator of the the hockey-stick explanation of allegedly rising global temperatures. Ball gave a talk in Manitoba that was highly critical of the hockey-stick theory, and the legal papers came flying.

“Within 12 hours, a lawsuit was filed on Michael Mann’s behalf,” he said. “Here’s an American living in Pennsylvania filing a lawsuit in British Columbia for an event that occurred in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This is what they call jurisdictional shopping. It’s a measure to me of the extent to which they’re using the law to silence people.”

Ball is being sued under what are known as SLAPP laws, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, and those laws have been used to chill political speech. Eight of 10 Canadian provinces have anti-SLAPP laws, but British Columbia recently rescinded its anti-SLAPP provisions, allowing the suit to proceed there.

Ball said Americans and Canadians need to fight back against this assault on speech rights.

“The use of the law to silence people is becoming endemic,” he said, noting that lawsuits are often aimed at media outlets that publish material critical of the climate-change movement.

“When you start to lose an argument, you start to attack the individual,” Ball said. “That’s what these lawsuits are; they’re silencing the individual. But they have a residual effect. People have said to me, ‘We wouldn’t go through what you’re going through, so we’re going to keep our mouths shut.'”

He said he hears some version of that fear on a regular basis.

“I’ve had scientists say to me, ‘We agree with you, but we won’t say anything because we’ll lose our jobs,” Ball said. “Scientists have said to me, ‘Look, we’re Democrats or socialists. Even though we agree with you, we’re not going to say that because immediately we’ll be cast as right-wing conservatives.'”

When asked if this legal and financial road of hardship has been worth it, Ball said it’s complicated.

“It really doesn’t matter now,” he said. “I’m in this, and I’m not going to quit. I’m going to move forward with it. Truth be known, if I knew what I was going to go through, I probably wouldn’t have done it again.

“But of course, as Edmund Burke famously said, evil triumphs when good people stand idly by.”

The Trump administration has given its blessing for Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin to implement work requirements for some Medicaid recipients, and while his critics are predicting this move will result in people needlessly dying, Bevin argues it will lead to better health outcomes because more people have a stake in the system.

Bevin’s predecessor, Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear, embraced Medicaid expansion as President Obama’s health law took effect. However, Bevin told WND and Radio America that decision did not result in better health care for the people in Kentucky.

“The whole purpose of having health coverage is to, ultimately, allow people to have better health outcomes,” he explained. “What we have seen is through the expansion of Medicaid, we actually have fewer doctors, not more, that will even see Medicaid patients, which means that we’ve made access to health care less possible, even though more people are covered.”

Bevin said just adding people to Medicaid isn’t even an upgrade for those who had no coverage prior to Obamacare taking effect and Kentucky agreeing to expand Medicaid.

“Studies that have been done have shown that people with Medicaid access in some instances have lesser health outcomes, at best equivalent health outcomes to people with no coverage at all,” Bevin said. “That’s a pretty sobering fact.”

And he said the short-term evaluation of health in Kentucky is seeing no improvement.

“Kentucky leads the nation in many health categories that we would not want to: diabetes, lung cancer, premature death, hypertension, cardiac arres, and cardiovascular disease,” Bevin said. “These are things we don’t want to lead the nation on, and these numbers have only gone up since we’ve expanded Medicaid. This tells us something isn’t working.”

As governor, Bevin said it is his job to make sure taxpayer dollars are providing some value for the people in the commonwealth.

“I’m a big believer in spending the money that we have and not more, being good stewards of the taxpayers’ money because it is our own money. I believe in cutting regulation, simplifying the process. But above all else as it relates to health care and any other policy that comes from government, we have to look at what the return is that we get on investment,” he said.

“So as it relates to this issue and everything else, my approach to governing is to get a good return for the taxpayers on their money and to get results. At the end of the day, that’s what we should be paying for,” he said.

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Gov. Matt Bevin:

Bevin said it is clearly in the interest of Kentucky to change its approach to Medicaid, and he wants to make it in the interest of each person in the Bluegrass State.

“If people have a vested interest in something, because they have actively participated in it, then they’re more likely to value it and utilize it,” Bevin said. “The analogy I’ve often given is for people who have bought their own bicycle. The odds are pretty high that they didn’t leave that bicycle out in the rain. In other words, if you care about something, you’re going to pay better attention to it.”

He is also quick to point out that the new policy applies to a fairly small percentage of Medicaid recipients.

“This doesn’t apply to anybody who is a traditional Medicaid patient: the elderly, the frail, someone who’s pregnant, a child, someone who has a disability, who is addicted to drugs. These are people for whom there is not an expectation. These are people for whom Medicaid was originally designed,” Bevin explained.

“What it wasn’t designed for is working-aged, able-bodied men and women, people with no dependents, people who could get engaged but for some reason have not. That’s not who this system was designed for so this waiver, this expectation that people work, or volunteer or get training or get education only applies to a small subset of the expanded Medicaid population.”

He estimates that 60 percent of those in the expanded Medicaid pool already comply with the requirements, which is to work, volunteer, train or get education for 20 hours per week – either all in one area or in a combination of two or more categories.

So what impact could this have in Kentucky?

“As we have done projections, and they are only that, we would expect that five years from now there might be as many as 95,000 current recipients who are no longer needing Medicaid for one of two reasons. A, they have moved their way up and out, and that should be the bulk of them. And B, they just don’t want to do anything at all in exchange for something of value,” Bevin said.

Liberal critics are savaging Bevin for pushing work requirements, alleging that people will end up dying because those standards could not be met. In addition to the statistics comparing Medicaid coverage versus no coverage, Bevin points out that he grew up in deep poverty and never had health coverage until he joined the military.

He also said Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma articulates his approach to the issue perfectly.

“[She] said that to do other than this is to treat those who are poor with the soft bigotry of low expectations. That is perfectly said,” Bevin explained.

“I find it offensive that liberals think that poor people can’t do things for themselves and need to be wards of the state. That’s offensive. I find that kind of bigotry to be reprehensible, and in Kentucky, we’re not going to tolerate it. We’re going to give people a better opportunity.”

North Korea expert Gordon Chang is not surprised the Western media swooned over Kim Jong Un’s sister at the start of the Olympics, but he said this “political warfare” won’t change the big picture very much unless the South Korean president acts on his desire to undermine U.S. policy.

Over the weekend, media outlets from CNN and Reuters to the Washington Post and the New York Times lavished praise on Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, for her performance in South Korea. CNN said she was stealing the show. The Washington Post compared her to Ivanka Trump. Reuters and the New York Times said her wordless smiles outflanked Vice President Mike Pence in diplomatic effectiveness.

While the coverage appalled Americans and others familiar with the gulags and murderous repression of the Kim regime, Chang was not surprised Kim got such positive coverage.

“North Koreans may rank last in almost every metric when it comes to their miserable state, but they are number one in one category, and that is political warfare,” Chang told WND and Radio America. “They are masters at getting good publicity, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they were able to do it this time.”

He said the United States needs to catch up in the messaging department.

“The United States has a great message, but we are not good at political warfare, especially since the end of the Cold War,” Chang said. “What we need to do is to get our message out. North Koreans are very good at getting their message out.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Gordon Chang:

Chang said North Korea has two objectives with this diplomatic charm offensive. The long-term goal of conquering South Korea remains unchanged, but he said the Trump administration approach to the regime is creating some major and more immediate problems.

“I think [North Korea] has looked at the sanctions regime that has been put together by the Trump administration. You have U.N. sanctions. You have U.S. sanctions. Basically, North Korea needs relief. There’s anecdotal evidence suggesting that the regime is starting to have real problems because of the lack of money. So Kim is saying to South Korea, ‘Give me some cash,'” Chang explained.

But for all the headlines about Kim outflanking Pence in South Korea, Chang said Pence did a very good job of showing the South Korean people that he stood with North Korean defectors. He also visited a memorial for South Korean sailors murdered by North Korea in 2010.

Also, according to the Washington Post, Pence struck a deal with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, with the U.S. agreeing to hold talks with North Korea without preconditions and South Korea agreeing not to send aid to North Korea.

While the latter part of the agreement seems obvious in the U.S., Chang said it’s a major concession for Moon, who is quite possibly the most far left president in South Korean history.

“Moon Jae-in is a Korean nationalist,” Chang said. “He believes in one Korea. So President Moon is going to try to do all those things to knit the two Koreas together.”

The good news for the U.S. is that a growing number of South Koreans do not share Moon’s approach and are not impressed with the North Korean charm campaign.

“It’s not working among the conservatives who just abhor North Korea,” he said. “But it’s also not working among a critical group, and that is voters in their twenties. Voters in their twenties have, by and large, become South Korean nationalists who believe their society is separate and apart from North Korea.”

Moon’s desire to “knit the two Koreas together” was on full display during the opening ceremonies Friday. Some Americans were frustrated that no mention was made of the sacrifice made by Americans and others in the Korean War, which set the stage for South Korea being free and prosperous while their North Korean neighbors are impoverished and enslaved.

“In a country led by Moon Jae-in, who does want to see one Korea, who believes in a Korea separate and apart from everybody else, that’s not too much of a surprise,” Chang said. “It does look like we were isolated, but that’s the way that Moon views the world, and we’ve got to get used to it.

“That means the United States has to talk to a critical audience. And that is South Korean voters, to make sure they hem in Moon Jae-in.”

He said Moon is a “daily struggle” for the Trump administration’s effort to rein in North Korea.

“Moon Jae-in, if left to his own devices, would do things to undermine the alliance with the United States,” Chang explained.

“I think that he would be willing to adopt a sunshine policy, in other words indefinite, unconditional aid to the North Koreans,” he said. “Certainly, that would undermine the maximum pressure campaign of President Trump at the United Nations Security Council.”

However, Chang said Pence and other U.S. officials have done a good job of preventing Moon from providing money to North Korea. He said the best-case, and likely, scenario is that all this political warfare will accomplish very little.

“I’m going to be an optimist and say they’re pretty much going to be the same way they were before the Olympics,” Chang said. “The reason I’m saying optimist is because I don’t think there will be the conditions under which Moon can reach out to the North. I think the North will engage the South Koreans, but they’ll also commit provocations that’ll make it very difficult for Moon to have all these reconciliation moves.

“I think we’ll be pretty much where we were before and that is South Korea, reluctantly but nonetheless, standing with us against North Korea.”

The explosion of sexual abuse revelations in recent months reveals a much bigger problem than many imagined, and Americans are now far more aware of the sexual abuse of children from cases ranging from Hollywood to disgraced USA Gymnastics Dr. Larry Nassar.

And a career sex crimes prosecutor says parents can play a vital role in preparing kids to recognize lewd behavior and in helping them come forward if abuse has occurred.

Stacey Honowitz serves as an assistant state attorney in Florida, specializing in cases of sexual abuse. She is also the author of “My Privates are My Privates,” a book designed to teach young kids about where people should not be touching them.

Honowitz says the litany of allegations of abuse remind us all that sexual predators are not creepy looking guys in trench coats.

“I’ve seen in my 30 years experience that it’s not that stranger. It’s normally somebody that you know. It could be someone in the family. It could be a coach. It could be a rabbi. It could be a priest. Sex crimes really know no boundaries. Anybody can be a predator and anybody can be a victim,” said Honowitz.

In short, it’s often people that we instinctively trust who may feel the most emboldened to act in an illicit way.

“What we find is people who were so trusted are usually master manipulators, because they know that the kids trust them. They know the kids aren’t going to report them. They know the kids have this bond with them. They feel they can manipulate the child so if they do something wrong then that child is never going to come forward,” said Honowitz.

“And that’s what we saw in Nassar. These girls never thought that this elite doctor who was training the Olympic athletes would ever do something and cross the line. So they didn’t know to report it and they didn’t know if something was wrong,” said Honowitz.

That why she says parents must communicate with their kids that any improper touching from anyone is wrong.

“You want tell your kid, ‘Even if you love [the suspected predator], even if you trust them, they can always do something to betray that trust. And you can never feel funny about telling mom or dad or somebody that you feel uncomfortable,’ even if you think to yourself this could never be happening,” said Honowitz.

The interview:

With an endless array of after-school and weekend extracurricular activities, Honowitz says it is vital for parents to keep an eye out for some telltale signs of trouble, starting with someone who is spending more time than necessary with your kids.

“A lot of parents feel that if someone is taking such an interest in their child that it’s wonderful. And I’m not here to tell you that every coach in the world or every person that’s nice to your kid is a sexual predator because that’s not the case.

“But if you see conversations, text messages, the person wants to take your kid when you’re not around, tells you they’re going to babysit or take them to the movies. If it doesn’t pass the smell test or the relationship is just reeking of something that’s not kosher, you need to ask your kid.

“‘What’s going on? Why are you spending so much time? Why is he giving you presents? Why is he taking you there? Why is he asking if you want him to babysit? Why is he taking you to a practice when you don’t have a practice?'” said Honowitz.

She says seeing the warning signs is not as complicated as some think it is.

“You really just kind of need to be smart. Use your common sense. We all think this is such a major thing and that it’s rocket science. It’s not. It’s common sense to see that someone wants to spend a lot of time with your kid and you’re trying to figure out why,” said Honowitz.

If concerns do arise, Honowitz encourages a clear, unscripted conversation.

“You don’t ever want to say, ‘Step one, tell me what happened. Step two, did he talk to you?’ You don’t want to do it that way. That’s why the conversation needs to start early and very casual,” said Honowitz.

How early should the conversation start? Probably earlier than you’d like it to and earlier than you think it should.

“You have to teach the kids, ‘My Privates are My Privates,’ just like I said in the book and no one is allowed to touch them, even if the person tells you, ‘It’s OK. I need to do it for my job,'” said Honowitz.

And she says teaching kids proper anatomy is also crucial.

“You have to be able to tell them, ‘That’s your private,’ and you have to say it in the terms that are proper. So you don’t want to make up a name for vagina. You don’t want to make up a name for penis. Because you want them to know that this is part of their anatomy and no one can touch them there,” said Honowitz

She urges parents to teach kids those proper names the same time they’re learning where their eyes, nose, hand and feet are. Honowitz also says another good way for parents of young kids to communicate is to tell kids no one may touch them in areas that are covered by their underpants or bathing suit.

When it comes to encouraging kids to tell you if they are being abused, Honowitz says stressing that open line of communication takes a lot of power away from an abuser.

“So many times the perpetrator will say, ‘Listen, if you tell somebody I’m going to do this to you. I’m going to hurt your family. I’m going to hurt you. You’re going to be in trouble.’

“You’ve got to tell the kids, ‘If you feel comfortable enough to tell me, you don’t have to worry. You’ll never be in that position. He’s never going to hurt me. He’s never going to hurt my family. But if you don’t tell me what’s going on, you will be a perpetual victim,'” said Honowitz.

Often times victims and their parents feel powerless if the predator is someone powerful or has a sterling reputation. Honowitz says you’d be surprised what happens once someone comes forward.

“Just like in the gymnastics case, there is strength in numbers. Many times when you feel that your child is going to be the only one it doesn’t work out that way. If your child comes forward, lots of times other people will come forward because someone else has taken that step,” said Honowitz.

If a parent doesn’t know what to believe or has a child who often fails to tell the truth, Honowitz says to always bring the matter to authorities. She says investigators are skilled at determining whether allegations are likely to be true or if a child is being coached by one parent to lie about another in a divorce case or some other scheme is afoot.

However, Honowitz strongly encourages parents to believe your child and let the authorities worry about the investigation. She says dismissing a child’s allegations can do great damage to them.

“If you tell your child you don’t believe them, if that child is being sexually abused you cannot imagine what kind of secrets they have to live with for the rest of their lives.

“We saw it happen in Nassar. We saw one of the fathers didn’t believe his daughter. When everybody started coming forward, he ended up committing suicide because he couldn’t live with the guilt,” said Honowitz.

Rep. Dave Brat, R-Va., is slamming Republican congressional leaders for caving to spending demands by Democrats in a two-year budget bill that he anticipates will spark trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see while Republicans unilaterally surrender their greatest weapon for passing meaningful entitlement, welfare, or health care reforms.

Wednesday, just one day before another government funding deadline, the Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate announced an agreement to keep operations running for two years, but with a hefty price tag for the American taxpayers.

Republicans who favor the bill are celebrating the lifting of sequester spending caps on national defense. They also included language to repeal the Independent Payment Advisory Board, often referred to as “death panels” in the Affordable Care Act. And they contend there is money well spent on veterans’ programs, infrastructure, disaster relief, and opioid addition programs.

But Brat says everything is getting more money and the media’s estimate of $300 billion in new spending is actually low.

“It’s actually $400 billion now and wait ’til you see what policies get plowed into that $400 billion,” said Brat.

The congressman says the House of Representatives addressed appropriations last year, passing a budget that cut spending as well as 12 separate departmental spending bills. He says things fell apart once those bills got sent to the U.S. Senate.

“They failed. They failed on Obamacare. They failed on keeping their word to the American people on being fiscally responsible,” said Brat.

Earlier this week, the House passed a continuing resolution that boosted defense spending but left other levels unchanged.

“The House Freedom Caucus plussed up defense spending. The entire Republican Conference was in favor, plus up the military but nothing else. We were going to stay as a team on that call.

The interview:

“Then leadership got together and went to the Senate. They need nine Democrats and it morphed into a Democrat bill in five minutes. They plussed it up to $300 billion. When you add in contingency funding, it’s $400 billion,” said Brat.

“When you’ve got (Senate Minority Leader Chuck) Schumer saying this is a great bipartisan bill, and Republicans are in charge of the House, the Senate, and the White House, you might have a problem on your hands,” said Brat, who points out the two-year deal allows the Senate to wash its hands of the issue until late next year.

“The Senate basically doesn’t even want to vote on a budget next year. They’re scared of their shadow,” he said.

Brat is generally positive on Speaker Paul Ryan’s leadership but is not impressed with his actions on this bill.

“We got backed into a trap, but still [Ryan’s] got to take the boxing gloves and put them on and go over there to (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell and say no,” said Brat.

Brat says there’s only one reason why a bill like this gets passed in the GOP-run Congress.

“None of this has to do with rational policy. No one’s in favor of a trillion dollar deficit and so it’s all politics. It’s people protecting their hide and their slot up here . Taking the ‘yes’ vote is the easy vote. Sure, yes, yes, yes to everything. Put it on the credit card and the kids will pay it off. You know, we’re $21 trillion in debt right now,” said Brat.

And that’s about to get much worse.

“We’re going to have over trillion dollar deficits as far as they eye can see. If you’re a Republican and you’re fine with that, then I don’t get it,” said Brat.

Not only that, the required payments on the interest for the national debt were tamped down in recent years since interest rates were next to nothing. Brat says the markets are facing volatility now because of inflation fears brought on by rising wages. He says the tab to preserve the government’s solvency will also be on the rise.

“That wage inflation set off a signal. Markets are rational and they say, ‘Oh oh, interest rates are going to bump up once wages bump up,'” said Brat.

“We’re going to have inflation, interest rates going up, and then we’ve got to pay off $21 trillion in debt at normal interest rates like three, four, five percent, That’s going to be hugely costly and the market has properly recognized that,” said Brat.

In addition to being awash in red ink, Brat is aghast that GOP leaders effectively handcuffed themselves from getting any major reforms done in the next two years.

“They deemed the budget and gave up our ability to do budget reconciliation again this year in the budget. It’s a huge deal. That’s how we tried to get rid of Obamacare and that’s how we passed the very successful tax cut.

“This year, we were going to work on welfare reform and maybe some mandatory spending programs because they’re a $100 trillion unfunded (liability). Now for some reason e just unilaterally disarmed and gave away our power,” said Brat.

The reconciliation tool allows legislation to pass with a simple majority rather than having to meet the 60-vote threshold to cut off debate. Republicans will now have to keep their entire conference together and pick up nine Democrats to pass any legislation.

Brat, who calls this bill “a Christmas tree on steroids,” is getting some blowback from critics who want to know why he is so upset at a bill boosting federal spending by $400 billion when he just voted in favor of a tax bill that adds $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years.

Brat says the explanation is simple.

“I did my Ph.D. on economic growth and you’ve got to compete with the mainstream media that doesn’t know anything about economics. All you need is an additional 0.75 percent economic growth to pay for our tax cut,

So when you put together the regulatory relief we have and the tax cut bill itself. The bill itself won’t pay for all of it, but the economy is more than compensating for it. We’re only at one-and-a-half or two (percent growth), so if you get to 2.75 you’ve paid for it and the Fed of Atlanta has us growing at 5.4 next quarter,” said Brat.

He says this line of attack is proof positive that liberals are clueless on fiscal policy.

“The tax cut does pay or itself but government spending does not pay for itself. That’s Econ 101 and unfortunately I don’t think the Democrats took the class,” said Brat.

Media critic Howard Kurtz says the mainstream media are in grave danger of irreparably damaging their credibility by so blatantly and viscerally attacking President Trump on a daily basis, and he says those reporters are actually doing the president they loathe a huge political favor.

Kurtz is a longtime media analyst and columnist. He hosts “Media Buzz” on the Fox News Channel and is author of the new book “Media Madness: Donald Trump, the Press, and the War over the Truth.”

Kurtz told WND and Radio America that mainstream journalists effectively declared war on Trump from the moment his campaign started in 2015.

“There was something about Donald Trump that just gets under their skin,” Kurtz explained. “First, they just wrote him off. He was a clown. He was a sideshow. He was never going to win the nomination and, of course, he wasn’t going to win the election.”

Since getting elected, the media have only intensified the negative coverage.

“Many journalists try to be fair, but the overwhelming tone from most news organizations and many journalists is negative to the point that it’s almost a tsunami of negative coverage,” Kurtz said. “I think there’s something cultural there. There’s something visceral. There’s something about Donald Trump that just has made them change the standards they used in the past.”

Kurtz also points out that this media wear goes in both directions, with Trump frequently blasting what he considers “fake news,” sometimes mentioning reporters by name. He believes Trump “punches down” against the media too often and that some rhetoric goes too far, but he said Trump’s frustration with the coverage of his presidency is understandable.

“I didn’t agree with Steve Bannon when he said the press was the opposition party, but sometimes we do a pretty good imitation,” Kurtz said. “It’s not just opposing the policies. It’s all the personal stuff, attacking his family. There’s a lot in the book about all the horrible unfair press [Ivanka] gets because some social moderates and liberals think she should change her dad’s mind on every single subject.”

And he said the onslaught often devolves into petty matters.

“Trump cheats at golf. Trump had two scoops of ice cream. Trump eats pizza with a fork,” Kurtz said. “It’s just relentless, and it’s fueled by celebrities that also say very harsh things about him.”

In the book, Kurtz is clearly pained by journalists shedding all pretense of objectivity and seeing it as their duty to combat the president and his administration.

“But the mainstream media, subconsciously at first, have lurched into the opposition camp, are appealing to an anti-Trump base of viewers and readers, failing to grasp how deeply they are distrusted by a wide swath of the country,” wrote Kurtz.

“I am increasingly troubled by how many of my colleagues have decided to abandon any semblance of fairness out of a conviction that they must save the country from Trump,” he added.

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Howard Kurtz:

Kurtz then details the impact this incessant hostility against Trump is having on journalism as a whole.

“My greatest fear is that organized journalism has badly lost its way in the Trump era and may never fully recover,” he writes. “Even if the Trump presidency crashes and burns – in which case the press will claim vindication – the scars of distrust might never heal.”

In our interview, Kurtz expanded on those concerns.

“I hope I make the case in this book that there’s a real imbalance among some journalists who just think it’s their mission to stop Donald Trump from what he’s doing and maybe to knock him out of office,” he said. “I think the damage is very real, really troubling, and it’s not good for the country.”

However, the great irony, Kurtz said, is that this perpetual media venom over every action Trump takes only helps the president.

“It enables him to dominate and drive the news agenda every day,” he explained. “Also, many of his supporters out there in the country not only have more sympathy for the guy they see as their champion when he gets overwhelmingly negative coverage, but they also believe the elite media in New York, D.C., L.A. and so forth, look down on them and view them condescendingly. There are examples in the book of how that’s pretty true.”

Trump often has a strategy to his media battles, rather than just shooting from the hip or the lip, as his critics conclude. In June 2017, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski ridiculed Trump on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” including cracking jokes about his small hands. Trump fired back on Twitter.

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!” tweeted Trump.

While the media reacted in horror and others found it unbecoming of a president, this passage from Kurtz’s book reveals that Trump accomplished his real goal.

“Trump asked Anthony Scaramucci what he thought of the tweets against Mika and Joe: ‘I know what you’re going to say – unpresidential. Then what?’

“I don’t think you needed to go there,” Scaramucci said.

“‘Is Korea off the TV?’ Trump asked. Yes, the Mooch replied. North Korea’s nuclear buildup had been eclipsed.

“Is health care off the TV?” True, the impasse over the Senate bill had faded.

“Sounds good to me,” Trump said.

The investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections dominates mainstream media coverage. Kurtz said some developments warrant major coverage, but most do not.

“It’s a perfectly legitimate story. There’s a special counsel,” he said. “There have been indictments and guilty pleas, but every incremental development gets hyped like it’s the next Watergate.”

He said as the media rush to convict Trump of heinous crimes, they are failing to corroborate critical accusations and losing credibility in the process.

“I think there’s too law a bar, and I think there’s too much of a trigger finger when it comes to this president,” Kurt said. “CNN had three high-profile mistakes involving the president last year. One of them was about Anthony Scaramucci, who later became communications director for about 10 minutes, and three journalists got fired over that.”

CNN also reported that Trump and his son, Donald Trump Jr., received copies of WikiLeaks releases of hacked emails before they went public. That was also not true. ABC News suspended reporter Brian Ross for stating that Trump campaign officials met with Russian officials, when the meeting actually happened during the transition period.

However, Kurtz asserts that Trump operates a bit recklessly as well.

“There’s a term that some of his advisers have coined called ‘defiance disorder.’ What that means is they all get together and say, ‘Sir, you can’t do this. Don’t do this. It’ll be political suicide, don’t do it.’ He does it anyway because he’s Donald Trump and nobody tells him what to do,” Kurtz said.

Kurtz also said Trump’s constant blasting of the media could wear thin on his marginal supporters.

“I think it really excites the people who really like this president and think they’re viewed with disdain by the elite media,” he said. “But I don’t think it helps him expand his base beyond that 38-40 percent that are very loyal to Donald Trump.”

But long term, Kurtz said the media are doing themselves the greatest damage. He said the initial results of higher ratings for MSNBC and CNN and higher digital subscriptions for the New York Times show the open hostility is paying off in the short term. So he expects the negative barrage to continue.

“I don’t see any daylight there,” Kurtz said. “I don’t think it’s good for the country. I think there’s damage on both sides, but I particularly worry about my profession, which I love. There’s going to come a day when Donald Trump is no longer in the White House, but I think it’s going to be hard for us to get much of this credibility back.”

]]>http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/hatred-of-trump-takes-dangerous-toll-on-media/feed/0After 1 year of Trump, why is U.S. still spending at Obama levels?http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/after-1-year-of-trump-why-is-u-s-still-spending-at-obama-levels/
http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/after-1-year-of-trump-why-is-u-s-still-spending-at-obama-levels/#respondWed, 07 Feb 2018 02:01:41 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=4650687

As Congress approaches yet another government funding deadline, the U.S. government is still spending taxpayer dollars at Obama-era levels since lawmakers continue to kick the fiscal can down the road in perpetuity – and one leading economist says that inaction is triggering the return of trillion-dollar deficits that future generations will have to pay.

Vance Ginn is senior economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he also directs the foundation’s Center for American Prosperity. Ginn also shared his insights on recent stock-market volatility and what it means for the nation’s overall economic health.

On Feb. 8, the short-term continuing resolution approved last month will expire, triggering another partial government shutdown unless a funding bill is approved. Right now, Democrats and President Trump are drawing competing lines in the sand over immigration policy.

As a result, no one is advocating actual changes in spending for the various department and obligations of the government. In essence, the U.S. is still operating at Obama-era spending levels more than a year into the Trump administration.

Congress and Trump have repeatedly avoided dealing with the issue by passing and signing continuing resolutions in April, September, December and January. And there is no indication the next bill will be any different.

“What it seems like they’re doing is trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That’s the definition of insanity, and that’s what we continue to have in D.C,” Ginn told WND and Radio America.

“Congress hasn’t taken the opportunity here – and the multiple congresses before this – to restrain the growth of spending over time,” said Ginn, and he explained that political considerations are behind the failure to rein in spending.

While Democrats are doing their best to gum up Republican efforts to trim the federal budget, Ginn said the bottom line is Republicans know cutting spending comes with political consequences, so they’re reluctant to do it.

“When you’re looking at the next election cycle, you want to get re-elected,” Ginn said. “So it makes it very difficult to make those tough choices to cut spending for interest groups that are there often with their hands out.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Vance Ginn:

Recently, Treasury Department officials announced deficits for Fiscal Year 2018 could approach $1 trillion. Most reaction has been quick to blame the recently approved tax cuts. Ginn said that is one factor, but it’s not the primary factor.

“The driver of deficits and debt is spending,” Ginn said. “We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. We’ve got to get the spending under control as quickly as possible. This would be a great opportunity to do that.”

And he said deficits will continue to bury America until the big-ticket items are dealt with.

“The president has put out some good ideas, like rolling back some of the funds going to the EPA and some other areas, but we really have to have congressional action,” Ginn warned. “This isn’t just going to take cuts to spending. At some point, it’s going to have to be reforms to entitlement programs to really bend the cost curve so we don’t have massive deficits and debt year after year after year.”

Ginn said every year that lawmakers dither on spending adds another pile to the bill facing our children and grandchildren.

“That means future generations are going to have to pay more in taxes,” he said. “Currently, the national debt is around $21 trillion. [This year’s projected deficit] would push it up to $22 trillion or $23 trillion. If you add in unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare, we’re over $100 trillion in debt.”

Ginn said some states are modeling fiscal responsibility, and Congress could take a lesson from his state of Texas.

“When you look at the Texas model of low taxes, relatively less government spending and sensible regulation, what we’ve been able to do in Texas is pass conservative budgets that don’t increase by more than population growth plus inflation. Actually, it’s been less than that,” Ginn said.

“It would be great to see the day where Congress can do that. And that would help it to live within taxpayers’ means over time.”

Meanwhile, the past several days on Wall Street have investors reaching for the antacid. Before Tuesday’s gains, the markets saw the biggest losing streak in about two years. Ginn said the negative numbers approached the range of a typical correction, but figuring out why takes some work.

“Eighty percent of businesses have come in above expectations for earnings in the fourth quarter, so you would expect greater increases in the stock market as well,” Ginn said. “But there’s also anticipation of faster economic growth and higher inflation, and some of those things are starting to contribute to an increase in interest rates, which slows economic growth and reduces the money supply in circulation.”

But with the Federal Reserve edging interest rates up recently, why is inflation becoming a problem? Ginn sees two reasons.

“Part of that is from the economic growth potential from the tax cuts that were passed and people are already starting to see an increase in their pay,” Ginn said. “As they see an increase in pay, they like to spend more, and that increases demand. Without the increase in supply – which, I think, we will see from increased production from businesses – that would increase inflation.”

But there’s another, very different reason inflation concerns are mounting.

“The Federal Reserve has increased the money supply quite dramatically over the last decade, from quantitative easing and everything else,” Ginn said. “So you’re seeing inflationary pressures from that monetary factor as well.”

The bottom line though, Ginn said, is that Americans should have confidence in the economy going forward.

“The fundamentals are strong. The last three quarters of last year averaged three percent growth. That’s the long-term growth rate of our economy over the last 100 years,” said Ginn, noting the number is significantly better than during the Obama years.

The memo alleging major missteps by the FBI and Justice Department will not likely result in criminal charges, but that doesn’t mean the issues at stake are any less serious, says a former federal prosecutor who argues that law enforcement officials have done a terrible job of explaining the Russia investigation to the American people.

Carter Page

On Friday, the memo released from Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee accused FBI and Justice Department officials of obtaining a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance, or FISA, warrant on American Carter Page based on a discredited dossier. Page was a foreign policy adviser during the Trump campaign.

Republicans also allege officials failed to tell the FISA judge that the contents of the dossier had not been verified and that the document had been paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

The GOP memo also quotes former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe as testifying the warrant never would have been issued without presenting the dossier as probable cause.

But is any of this likely to result in criminal prosecution?

“I doubt that they’ve committed a criminal offense. More likely, what they’ve done is violate court rules and norms for the Justice Department’s performance when it refers evidence to the court and asks for use of the court’s processes like warrants,” said Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and a contributing editor at National Review.

McCarthy told WND and Radio America that prosecution in these cases is unlikely unless it rises to “an egregious level” of obstructing or perverting justice. But he said these allegations are still serious and could carry some major repercussions.

“It’s a very serious matter and can be grist for all kinds of administrative discipline and even impeachment,” McCarthy said.

He said it’s the difference between abuse of power and criminal conduct.

“There are some varieties of abuse of power that we address in the criminal law, but there are many we don’t,” McCarthy said. “That doesn’t mean that the abuses are less serious than crimes.”

Listen to the WND/Radio America interview with Andrew C. McCarthy:

One of McCarthy’s greatest frustrations lies in what he sees as the FBI and Justice Department needlessly confusing the American people on what the Russia investigation led by Robert Mueller is all about.

McCarthy does not believe that the memo is grounds for scrapping the Mueller probe, but he said it’s understandable why people are reaching that conclusion.

“It’s the fault of the FBI and the Justice Department that they’re taking that position,” said McCarthy, who noted that the government announced a counterintelligence investigation into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 campaign and that part of the probe would look at any Trump campaign officials who had improper ties to the Kremlin.

That was a completely inappropriate thing to say publicly because the FBI and the Justice Department should never comment on whether investigations are going on and, if they are going on, what the focus on them is. The government’s not supposed to talk about investigations.

The real problem is that by doing it the way they did it, they conflated in the public mind the overarching Mueller mission … with this whole idea of a Trump-Russian collusion angle.

And since, in the public mind, those two things are the same, then it’s perfectly understandable that people would say that if the Trump-Russia collusion angle is a complete fabrication and that a lot of it was built on this dossier, that Mueller’s investigation is illegitimate. I don’t think that’s true but I can see how they feel that way.

They feel that way because of what the FBI and Justice Department said about this investigation, which was very misleading and very wrong.

The Democrats’ counter-memo is likely to be the next development in this political drama. But McCarthy remains skeptical of their motivation in this investigation.

“What I’m afraid of is that it’ll just be a partisan political attack,” he said. “The reason I say that is not just because they’re Democrats and that’s what they do, although I must say on some level I do believe that.

“The other reason I’m fearful is that they were invited by the majority of the intelligence committee to make additions or changes to the [GOP] memo,” McCarthy explained. “They really didn’t want to cooperate in it. I think they just wanted to attack it in a partisan way.”

McCarthy said there are only two possible reasons for Democrats not to cooperate and try to add the context to the memo that they claim is sorely missing.

“The fact they didn’t do that suggests to me either that it doesn’t exist or they would rather package it in a way that was more of a partisan attack than an effort to get out one document that more fully explained what we’re dealing with,” McCarthy said.

He also cautioned Americans following the story to be prepared for frustrations at how difficult it is to make more information public, noting that intelligence investigations are necessarily secretive so as not to damage national security and intelligence interests.

In addition to the response from Democrats, McCarthy said the significance of the memo and more will depend on exactly the role the dossier played in securing the FISA warrant.

“If they had other information that would have supported the issuance of a FISA warrant, then the use of the Steele dossier is much less important,” he said.

“But if the Steele dossier was critical to getting the warrant issued, that means the government brought to a court information that was unverified and uncorroborated to get surveillance authority – in essence to spy on one presidential campaign with what turns out to be opposition research that was provided to the government by the other presidential campaign.”